Old Baoshan in the rain

(New photos from 2025 beneath.)

We visited the Old Baoshan (老宝山) in the north of Pudong, after a tip of Historic Pudong.

Baoshan is also a district on the other side of the river. It has the same Chinese characters, but there’s no proof that the names are related to each other. (It’s not too weird for an area to have two ‘Precious Mountains’, right?)

The area was closed but the gates weren’t locked. When I entered, I saw two guys who probably live here in their underwear (~36°C outside), but then it started to pour and I didn’t see them again. Here used to stand a full city wall encircling a town, but right now only two pieces of the wall remain and a tunnel in between, and a ridge of grass to mark the rest of the old wall.

The plaque is hard to read in the rain, Historic Pudong found a better one.

It’s already protected by heritage law, and they’ll probably turn this into a proper tourist location later.

For now, it’s an odd little trace left from a city built centuries ago, in between trucks & cargo containers.

New photos from October 2025

Latest

The Lies We Tell

The Lies We Tell

I left my hometown when I was 19. After nearly two decades in a dozen Dutch cities, Sydney and Shanghai, I’m back. I push Hasse’s stroller and see once again these streets and buildings that are old yet ever new. Everything is closer than I remember it, distances I travelled as a teenager seem now […]
October 27, 2026
Dit is ook China review

Dit is ook China review

‘Dit is ook China’ by Cindy Zhu Huijgen isn’t a perfect book. And yet it’s enjoyable, and when you turn the last page and close it, you’re — rather than feeling relieved — you’re just glad you read it, and you’re glad you’re a person who reads books. Before starting, I was a bit discouraged […]
October 26, 2026
Travel plugs

Travel plugs

In our new house, many appliances still get their power through a travel adapter. Eight years in China was long enough to not only put down roots and settle in, but also for everything we owned to end in a Chinese plug: my MacBook, the coffee machine, the rice cooker, the baby monitor. The appliances […]
September 21, 2026
Twenty-three years

Twenty-three years

In June we moved back to the Netherlands, six suitcases across 8000 kilometres, and after a brief spell at my parents’ place, we moved into our own home. This second move also involved putting down carpet, curtains, buying appliances and furniture — so that our new garage quickly filled with cardboard boxes and other packaging […]
August 29, 2026